When Your Shitty Access Management Makes Identity Security About As Useful As A Screen Door On A Submarine

So some pen-testing geniuses at Stern Security finally figured out what those of us in the trenches have been screaming about for years: you can have the fanciest fucking identity system in the world—MFA, biometrics, retina scans, DNA samples, a goddamn blood oath—and it won’t matter for shit if your access control is held together with duct tape and wishful thinking.

The article reveals that these security researchers pwned companies not by cracking some fancy zero-day or socially engineering some gullible HR drone, but by exploiting the digital equivalent of leaving your keys in the ignition with a “STEAL ME” sign on the windshield. Overprivileged accounts, standing access rights older than most of the fucking infrastructure, and service accounts with more privileges than the CEO’s expense account.

Here’s the kicker: 80% of the access they exploited was “justified” for business reasons. Translation: some lazy bastard in IT couldn’t be arsed to implement proper just-in-time access, so they gave everyone permanent admin rights and called it a day. “Oh, but Timmy in accounting *might* need to reset a server at 3 AM once every three years!” Fuck off with that noise.

The real problem? We keep treating identity like it’s the holy grail while access management is the redheaded stepchild we keep locked in the basement. Attackers don’t give a shit about your polished identity solution—they’re just looking for the path of least resistance, which invariably leads to some service account named “SQL_SVC_ADMIN” with a password that hasn’t changed since the Bush administration.

And don’t get me started on the so-called “Privileged Access Management” solutions most companies deploy. They’re basically expensive digital condoms that everyone finds a way to avoid using. Standing privileges, shared credentials, and emergency access procedures that become permanent faster than you can say “temporary workaround.” It’s like putting a vault door on a tent.

The solution? Zero standing privileges, just-in-time access, and actually giving a damn about access hygiene. But that would require work, planning, and telling users “no”—three things that make management break out in hives. So instead we’ll keep buying more identity tools and pretending that’ll fix everything while attackers run train on our network through shitty access controls.

Bottom line: Your identity security can be Fort Knox, but if your access management is a revolving door in a bad neighborhood, you’re still fucked.

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Read the full article here: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/when-identity-isnt-the-weak-link-access-still-is/

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*Related anecdote: Had a user last week whining that his account got compromised. Demanded to know how it happened when he had MFA enabled. Checked the logs—turns out his “admin” account (which he swore he never used) had been sitting dormant for 18 months with global admin rights. Some contractor used it to install crypto-miners on our Azure instances. Cost us $40k in compute charges. When I explained that his unused standing privileges were the problem, he asked if we could “just make MFA stronger.” I told him I’d make his account stronger by deleting it. Problem fucking solved.*

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